New York County denies request for names of gun permit holders

New York County denies request for names of gun permit holders

By Noreen O'Donnell | Reuters – 17 hrs ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Authorities in a suburban county north of New York City said on Tuesday they will refuse to release names of local gun permit holders to a newspaper that has been publishing the identities of thousands of license-holding residents.

Putnam County Clerk Dennis Sant said he would defy a request for information about pistol permit holders from the White Plains, New York-based Journal News, which has come under criticism for publishing thousands of such identities already.

"There is the rule of law, and there is right and wrong and the Journal News is clearly wrong," Sant said in a statement. "I could not live with myself if one Putnam pistol permit holder was put in harm's way, for the sole purpose of selling newspapers."

The Journal News first published a map listing thousands of pistol permit-holders in Westchester and Rockland counties, just north of New York City, on December 24.

The newspaper's editors said they sought the information after the December 14 shooting deaths of 26 children and adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, which has sparked nationwide debate about gun control.

Angered, state gun-owner groups have called for an advertising boycott of the newspaper until it takes the map and identities off its website.

The newspaper, owned by the Gannett Co., sought the information under the state's Freedom of Information law. It says the identities are a matter of public record.

Putnam County officials had said they were compiling the names for the newspaper but on Tuesday said instead they would not deliver the information.

The county clerk said he has received hundreds of phone calls urging him not to give the information to the paper.

The county clerk, Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell and other elected officials were slated to appear on Thursday at a news conference declaring their intentions. Also set to appear is state Sen. Greg Ball, a Patterson, New York, Republican who has said he will introduce legislation to keep permit information private except to prosecutors and police.

A similar bill that he introduced earlier as an assemblyman failed in the state Assembly.

The newspaper's editors were not available on Tuesday to comment on Putnam's announcement.

In the original article, the newspaper cited Robert Freeman, executive director of the state's Committee on Open Government, as saying he believed not only should the names and addresses be public, but also other information such as the types or numbers of guns someone owns.

Freeman told the newspaper that government records are presumed public unless their release is specifically barred by statute.

The newspaper's editor and publisher have said they expected the publication of the information to be controversial.

"But we felt sharing information about gun permits in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings," said Janet Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group.

Now it is the advertisers and readers of a New York newspaper who are caught in the crossfire, after its controversial decision to publish the names and addresses of gun owners in its community.

The initial story by the Westchester Journal News on Dec. 22 prompted a bitter backlash by gun advocates, who published the names and addresses of some of the newspaper’s staff. Since then, supporters and critics of the newspaper's controversial stand have been taking potshots at each other in a near-daily exchange that has drawn national attention.

"The Journal News has made no credible case, nor offered any valid reason, for releasing the data."

- New York State Rifle & Pistol Association

“The data posted also includes active and retired police officers, judges, battered and stalked individuals, FBI agents, and more," the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association said in a release that marked the latest escalation. "The Journal News has made no credible case, nor offered any valid reason, for releasing the data, and it serves no investigative or journalistic purpose. It merely invites harassment and burglary.”

The association is calling for a possible boycott of the Gannett-owned newspaper's national advertisers. But the paper isn't just worried about suffering economic harm. On Dec. 28, it began posting armed guards outside one of its offices, according to local police, shortly after a blogger published the names and home addresses of the 50 journalists who worked on the interactive map showing who owned legally-registered guns.

And the battle shows no signs of subsiding. Hackers claim to have broken into the Journal News' online subscriber database and say they're circulating passwords and user information for 10,000 account holders. They have also made online threats to publish the home addresses and phone numbers of executives at the newspaper’s major advertisers.

One New York lawmaker said he plans to introduce legislation making it illegal to obtain gun permit holders’ information through Freedom of Information Act requests, which is how the Journal News obtained the permit holders’ information used to create their controversial online database.

“The Journal News has placed the lives of these folks at risk by creating a virtual shopping list for criminals and nut jobs,” said Republican State Sen. Greg Ball, in announcing his intent.

There is one apparent beneficiary of all the controversy: The paper's competitor, the Rockland County Times, claimed in an article to have seen an "influx of new subscribers who stated they canceled their subscription to the Journal News due to the gun story.”

He's one of the nation's leading advocates for stricter gun laws, but Mayor Bloomberg today refused to support a newspaper's decision to publish the names and addresses of weapons permit holders.

It wasn't an easy call.

"My instincts would be no, but I can't give you a good argument," the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show.

He noted that the information is public and publication was protected by the First Amendment.

"The public owns the data," he said. "On the other hand I'm not so sure we should go publish everybody's tax return...or everybody's psychiatric records if they have dealings with a public hospital. Do we really want that?"

Those records, however, are considered private and are not made public.

The Journal News created a furor when it published a map with the names and addresses of weapons permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties.

The information was obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Another upstate county, Putnam, won't provide its gun data to the newspaper.

I hope that they sue the you know what of of that Socialist little rag of a paper. JMO
Inmates using newspaper's gun owner map to threaten guards, sheriff says

Published January 04, 2013
FoxNews.com

Law enforcement officials from a New York region where a local paper published a map identifying gun owners say prisoners are using the information to intimidate guards.

Rockland County Sheriff Louis Falco, who spoke at a news conference flanked by other county officials, said the Journal News' decision to post an online map of names and addresses of handgun owners Dec. 23 has put law enforcement officers in danger.

"They have inmates coming up to them and telling them exactly where they live. That's not acceptable to me," Falco said, according to Newsday.

Robert Riley, an officer with the White Plains Police Department and president of its Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, agreed.

"You have guys who work in New York City who live up here. Now their names and addresses are out there, too," he said adding that there are 8,000 active and retired NYPD officers currently living in Rockland County.

Local lawmakers also say that they intend to introduce legislation that prevents information about legal gun owners from being released to the public.

The newspaper published the online map last month alongside an article titled, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood." The map included the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

While the paper ostensibly sought to make a point about gun proliferation in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the effort may have backfired. A blogger reacted with a map showing where key editorial staffers live, and some outraged groups have called for a boycott of parent company Gannett’s national advertisers. Ironically, the newspaper has now stationed armed guards outside at least one of its offices.